Within two years, Rahul Print O Pack has invested in two Speedmaster CS 92 presses. L to R – Rahul Kumar Soni, Ajay Kumar Soni and Seema Soni. Photo Heidelberg
Rahul Print O Pack in Delhi commissioned its first CS92 4-color machine in 2018 and a Heidelberg Suprasetter 106 CtP. In fourteen months, the company printed 64 million sheets on the new press. “This performance is well above average,” says Samir Patkar, president of Heidelberg India.
After two successful years of printing on the first Speedmaster, Rahul Print o Pack ordered a second, identical CS 92. “Both the presses are currently working 24/7 to our complete satisfaction,” according to the company’s manager of Business Development, Rahul Soni. “Between 25 and 30 jobs with a total of 146,000 good sheets were produced in a 12-hour shift,” he says. “Around 75% of the print orders are between 3,000 and 7,000 sheets.”
Founded in 2007 by Ajay Kumar Soni, Rahul Print O Pack initially concentrated on post-press while outsourcing the printing. Currently, much of the production workflow uses Heidelberg solutions. The company has grown from commercial print to monocarton printing and converting.
Both the Speedmaster CS 92 4-color presses can print on paper from 0.3 millimeters to 0.6-millimeter thick board. This positions the competitively in the commercial printing and carton markets. Soni credits the Speedmaster CS 92s for their stability and excellent productivity. He is also confident of the support from the Heidelberg India team. “Even during the Covid-19 situation, we are receiving excellent support,” he says.
The CS92, which is only manufactured in Heidelberg’s Shanghai plant, is built on the solid Speedmaster CD 102 platform, with a maximum speed of 15,000 sheets an hour. Integrated with Heidelberg’s Prinect workflow for intuitive and straightforward operation, the Speedmaster CS 92 is popular with commercial and packaging printers in Asia and India.
The sheet format, plate size, and other features serve the needs of a printing market in which print runs are getting smaller and job changes more frequent. Printers are keen to increase productivity and reduce capital investment, overheads, and consumable costs. Heidelberg India has sold and installed 63 printing units of this series in recent times.
2023 promises an interesting ride for print in India
Indian Printer and Publisher founded in 1979 is the oldest B2B trade publication in the multi-platform and
multi-channel IPPGroup. While the print and packaging industries have been resilient in the past 33 months since the pandemic lockdown of 25 March 2020, the commercial printing and newspaper industries have yet to recover their pre-Covid trajectory.
The fragmented commercial printing industry faces substantial challenges as does the newspaper industry.
While digital short-run printing and the signage industry seem to be recovering a bit faster, ultimately
their growth will also be moderated by the progress of the overall economy. On the other hand book
printing exports are doing well but they too face several supply-chain and logistics challenges.
The price of publication papers including newsprint has been high in the past year while availability is diminished by several mills shutting down their publication paper and newsprint machines in the past four years. Indian paper mills are also exporting many types of paper and have raised prices for Indian printers. To some extent, this has helped in the recovery of the digital printing industry with its on-demand short-run and low-wastage paradigm.
Ultimately digital print and other digital channels will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future. For instance, there is no alternative to a rise in textbook consumption but this segment will only reach normality in the next financial year beginning on 1 April 2023.
Thus while the new normal is a moving target and many commercial printers look to diversification, we believe that our target audiences may shift and change. Like them, we will also have to adapt with agility to keep up with their business and technical information needs.
Our 2023 media kit is ready, and it is the right time to take stock and reconnect with your potential markets and customers. Print is the glue for the growth of liberal education, new industry, and an emerging economy. We seek your participation in what promises to be an interesting ride.
